Futuristic I shall have my empire yet. (Buttercup. & Syntra)

[Buttercup.]

Need-to-know basis. That’s how it always was with smuggling jobs. The less Jade knew the better. Get the stuff - whatever ‘the stuff’ might be - from point A to point B, get paid, no questions asked on either side. That was her bread and butter, and she was pretty damn good at buttering bread with butter.

Still, a couple of years into her career she figured one can’t live on bread and butter alone (seriously, that can’t be healthy), and surely there was some way she could put her liberal arts degree to good use. Well guess what, Mum, learning about obscure languages and extinct cultures has been paying off! All around the galaxy, civilisations have been hiding priceless relics in the most predictable of places, and it was like a box of chocolates to anyone who knew the first thing about history (and an assortment of other fields such as infiltration, smuggling, spelunking or basic accounting, of course).

She still remembered the stories of Exenem she’d heard back in university. A fairly large and prosperous kingdom, proficient in various kinds of magic and whatnot, but then it disappeared one day. She couldn’t quite remember if there was an officially agreed-upon reason the kingdom went under, but that was really beside the point. The point was that, according to her sources (which were rarely wrong), some members of the royal family had been left in cryogenic stasis. Probably self-contained hibernation units, easy enough to move and likely to fetch a very good price from a museum or something.

Now of course, Jade had read all about the various curses and spells supposedly protecting the hibernation vault, but all of that was either dramatic nonsense or things that would’ve worn off by now, she was sure. This wasn’t her first rodeo. Every time some old-ass scriptures said a treasure trove was protected by ‘dark ancient magic’ it had just turned out to be a bunch of mechanical traps, most of which didn’t even work properly after all those centuries. She’d be fine!
"Be careful out there, yeah?" her talking squirrel suggested.
"I always am, Sir Munchington. Don't worry."

Just as expected, the vault posed no real danger to someone who could read the language and figure out some tired old tricks. Colour-coded tiles where stepping on some might result in a fiery death? Oldest trick in the book. Some ominous occult symbols that looked… oddly familiar, even if she couldn’t tell why? Bah, whatever. She pushed forward without any setbacks to speak of, and soon she reached her prize.

Well… a body in a chunky box made mostly out of metal would be harder to move than most of the stuff she was used to, she had to admit. Still, with a bit of elbow grease and a little electromagnetic wizardry, Jade managed to unplug the contraption and move it to her ship. She hooked it up to the ship’s power core without delay - wouldn’t want whoever’s in there to thaw before this is over! And, well, it was time to get the hell out of here before anyone got suspicious - not like the current inhabitants cared about some ancient ruins, but still.

The trip back to orbit was uneventful, and Jade liked it that way. But of course, if she liked something, it couldn’t stay that way for very long.
“ATTENTION. POWER SOURCE INCOMPATIBLE. MALFUNCTION IMMINENT,” an automated voice screeched from the stasis unit.
Of course. It was stupid to assume an ancient device like this would work with her ship’s power source without any issues whatsoever. Of course. Well, what now? She wasn’t going to fucking put it back where she’d found it, now was she? Maybe the machine was just glitching out. Maybe the warning was a dud. Maybe it’d keep working just fine despite the incompatibility.

Or maybe it’d just gradually thaw the person within and then unlock the lid to be opened from the inside. That seemed to be the far more likely option, if the voice’s repeated nagging was any indication. With a deep breath, Jade set her ship to autopilot and decided to keep an eye on the hibernation pod. With a weapon on hand. After all, she had no idea who was in there and what mood they were in when they were frozen.
"This was the stupidest idea you've ever had, senpai." Well, Sir Munchington probably wasn't wrong.

 

[Syntra]

Auryn couldn't breathe.

All around her, stars were exploding, and covering the sky with fiery trails-- they were open wounds, gashes, bandages drowning in blood. Dramatic, eh? The princess would have thought the same, once upon a time, had it not been for... well, that. For the thing that had crawled from the depths of the earth, all teeth and claws. For the prayers that had risen to the heavens, like a wisp of smoke. Except, see, there was no smoke without fire, was there? And they really, really should have looked for it, back when it had been just a spark. Back when it had--

"Your highness!"

The voice reached her from a distance much greater than it had any right to travel, but when Auryn looked up? The maid was right there, holding her by the waist. Oh. Was she-- was she allowed to do that? Some rule was being broken here, the princess was sure, but her mind was drowning in fog. Why was it important, again? Had it ever been? "Your highness, you must not stay here. Follow me." Quickly, Auryn was escorted down the winding staircase, lower and lower and lower, away from all the screams, away from all the panic. (As a child, she remembered fearing darkness. 'Don't worry, Auryn! It's not like monsters are hiding in there,' her father had laughed, with that breathy laugh of his. 'But, see, if you are still afraid, just have me summoned and I will cleave them in half.' Was the offer still valid, now that he had met that very fate? Somehow, Auryn sincerely doubted that. Since the sky had fallen on their heads, she had started to doubt many, many, many things.)

(And she couldn't breathe.)

"Hurry, princess!" the maid chastised her. "It's not too far now." Well, maybe it wasn't, but what was she supposed to do with that information? When every step felt like walking on razors, these assurances didn't exactly fill you with hope. Auryn gasped in pain, and suddenly... suddenly there was yet another pair of strong hands, supporting her from the other side.

"Is the sarcophagus ready?" the mysterious man inquired.

"As ready as it will ever be. Quick!"

"What about the rest of the--"

"Not now, Eirene!"

The voices blended into one another, in the same way cream dissolved in your morning coffee the second you moved your spoon, and, for a moment or two, Auryn felt... weightless. Unreal, sort of, like a fata morgana given flesh. (How come the screams couldn't reach her? How deep underground did she have to be, and why had nobody told her of this place?)

These questions, and more of them, were swirling around in her head as they laid her inside, gently, like one might lay a child in their crib. (Or, you know, like a corpse into its casket. Depended on how optimistic you were feeling, Auryn supposed, and, no, she hasn't had a lot of reasons for optimism lately.)

"Sleep now, princess. May you wake up when the times are kinder."

(And, still, she couldn't breathe. Maybe it didn't really matter, though.)

***

Thump, thump.

Thump, thump.

The lid of the sarcophagus, apparently programmed to respond to the heartbeat, moved away with a silent 'ssss.' When it did, steam filled the room, enough to paint everything in white. Maybe the person inside had died and Jade had been tasked with escorting a really fancy corpse?

...or maybe not. See, unless you found yourself in a B-grade horror, a corpse's eyes usually didn't flutter open.

Carefully, as if she expected her spine to break at any moment, Auryn sat up. The chambers she found herself in didn't strike her as familiar, but... well, maybe that wasn't a bad sign? It certainly couldn't be a sign worse than the sky turning into a large, bleeding bruise. If you asked her, it also couldn't be much worse than-- no, she wasn't going to think about that now! Not in front of her subjects, anyway. Father had always said the king had to be steel, and the princess supposed that duty fell on her shoulders now. Oh well.

Perhaps for the first time in centuries, Auryn took a breath that didn't taste of ashes. (A pleasant change, by the way.) "Who might you be, loyal retainer? You find yourself in the presence of your princess, and she demands you to speak. What message do you bring about the status of my kingdom?"

 

[Buttercup.]

Well, the freshly thawed person's first reaction to Jade's presence was not as hostile as it could've been. No, instead it seemed... delusional? Maybe hibernation could mess with one's memories and cognitive processes? Maybe her brain simply hadn't fully booted up yet? Well, Jade figured she might as well play along for now, people can get violent when you challenge their false beliefs.

"Umm... welcome back, your highness," she said in what she liked to think was an old-timey posh accent, but really, it was just silly. Sir Munchington gave her that 'really?' look, but found it in himself to keep his mouth shut. For now. "My name's Jade." The other woman probably wouldn't care enough to remember if she took herself for a royal and her for a lowly peasant, but it would've been awfully impolite of Jade not to introduce herself.

Wait a minute. The girl claimed she was a princess, didn't she? If Jade's memory served, the only Exenem princess alive at the time of the kingdom's downfall would've been a certain princess Au-... umm, Aurene? Auryn? Aurora? Something like that, anyway. And princess Au-Whatshername's body had never been found. So she told herself not to discount the possibility that she had in fact stolen- ahem, retrieved the cryogenic sarcophagus of the heiress to a long-lost empire. Well, damn. That could get complicated, huh? Jade decided to keep her weapon ready just in case - an ancient royal might not take the news of everything they thought was theirs having been lost very well, after all.

"I'm afraid there aren't any news, exactly. The kingdom of Exenem hasn't existed for centuries." Was that breaking the news too bluntly? Probably. "Umm... with your leave, your highness, I propose we get you some clothes," she said, moving over to one of her lockers. Naturally, none of the outfits she typically wore came close to anything resembling royal attire, but surely they'd be more dignified than walking around naked.

"Give her that one, senpai," Sir Munchington suggested quietly. "You look fat wearing it."
"No I don't! And she's a similar build anyway."
"Pff, yeah right. You're a little more muscular. Which makes you look chubby in some clothes."
"Hey, speak for yourself, lard-arse," Jade poked his well-fed belly.
"My people have different beauty standards," Sir Munchington retorted with an offended huff.
Jade cackled at the poor defence and kept digging around. "Wow, I still have that?" she pulled out a relatively classy black dress. "Whatcha think, Munchy?"
"Well that's about as posh as your wardrobe gets, so sure."

Once Jade had handed Auryn the dress, she decided to get some facts straight. Having the princess of Exenem here in the flesh was, after all, a wonderful opportunity to expand her knowledge of history, possibly with facts no-one else was aware of! She could write a book about this! "Do you remember anything before you were put in the chamber? Such as what exactly happened? History books are rather blurry on that part."